I’m currently reading a book where the author said that God remains hidden from us today so that we may freely choose to love him or not. You can’t generate love through compulsion, he argued. And he’s right about that. As an illustration, he gave Kierkegaard’s story about a king in disguise:
Once upon a time, there was a king who longed to marry. One day, as he was riding through his kingdom, he happened to see a very beautiful young lady in a poorer section of the kingdom. He was struck by her beauty, so he found reasons to travel through there more often, even getting the chance to speak to her on occasion. As time went by, he realized he wanted to pursue a relationship with the woman, but how should he go about it?
As king, he could have her brought to the palace so that he could court her, or even propose marriage immediately. It would be very hard for her to refuse the king, but he wanted to marry for love. So he also considered dressing as a peasant in order to get to know her, and only revealing his true identity if she genuinely fell in love with him. But the dishonesty inherent in that approach was unappealing.
He finally thought of a real solution. He would give up his station as king and move into her neighborhood as a regular citizen, perhaps taking up a profession like carpentry [wink, wink]. Then, if she came to love him, they could marry, and he would know that her love was truly for him and not his position.
It’s a nice story, and its application is clear. God loves us and wants us to love him. Because of his position, he could command our love, but then it would not be genuine. His solution was to come in the flesh as Jesus, giving up his position in Heaven so that we could come to know him and love him legitimately.
But when you think about it, this isn’t an accurate illustration at all. In the story, the young woman only stands to gain. If she never meets the king, or if she never falls in love with him, then her life is no worse than it was before. But this is not what Christianity teaches. It claims that all humans are sinful, and we need saving. A better illustration would be a story where people on a cruise have fallen overboard. Someone still on the ship offers to throw the people a life preserver. Will those people first try to get to know him before they accept his offer? Of course not! They’ll happily take any help they can get. All that they really needed was to understand how serious their situation was.
To show the effectiveness of this, consider so many of the conversion accounts in the Book of Acts, especially chapter 2. Peter preaches to the crowd on the Day of Pentecost, and (supposedly) about 3000 of them were converted to Christ that day because of Peter’s message. Did they really know who Jesus was? Did they really have a deep relationship with him at that point? No. The implication is that they simply became convinced that they needed what only he could offer. They were drowning, and they needed rescue. According to that passage, that’s all that was required.
But since God is so well hidden that we can question his very existence, many of us don’t even know we need saving. Oh sure, there are people from a thousand different faiths telling us we need salvation, but the evidence they give to support this claim is woefully inadequate. Why doesn’t God give us a bigger sign, if we’re really in trouble? Why doesn’t he just tell us directly? Why aren’t all these people who are so ready to believe in God united by a single religion? It’s hard to believe there’s a fire when there’s no trace of smoke.
The most glaring problem with this story is Hell. Not all Christians believe in a literal, torturous Hell, but many do, including the author of this book I’ve been reading. How is Hell not compulsion? To fit it into the illustration, we’d need to change a few details. Instead of the king passively waiting to see if the maiden will accept him, he promises his love, but also promises to roast her alive if she refuses his advances. It’s not quite so nice a story when we add in that detail.
When you get right down to it, Christianity is all about compulsion. God loves you, and he doesn’t want to force you to love him or serve him. Of course if you don’t, you’ll be tortured forever.
This only shows that the problem of God’s hiddenness hasn’t been solved at all. The author of this book, as well as many other Christians, say that God is hidden so we can have the “freedom” to either believe in him or not. But their reasoning is faulty, since Christianity gives us no such freedom. It’s like saying you’re free to commit murder in the US, even though it could earn you the death penalty in most states. The fact that there are laws prohibiting it means you aren’t free to do it. When you consider that the Christian God has every reason to let us all know he exists and that he expects certain things from us, the fact that he doesn’t do this is really all the evidence you need to see that he’s either not real, or he’s not all-loving and all-good.
Finding Truth 
Hey Unklee – wow you’ve got way too many questions to field here! You’re handling it well.
That’s right – it is just a definition. If there ended up being any of that physical stuff outside of the universe as we currently know it then if you wanted to keep that definition then we would just expand the understanding of our universe to include whatever else is physical.
As far as a necessary entity goes, the whole issue just comes to the fact that our finite minds cannot conceptualize an infinite regress, and infinite really does seem to bring up all sorts of very strange issues, so I won’t deny my problems with it too. My own personal view is that we can stop our explanations with anything. If we wanted to we can surmise that there are necessary laws of logic and perhaps other fundamental natural laws (math/physics/moral maybe?) that always existed which had the potential for creating universes (since nothing existed to prevent that from happening). This is another option. In fact it seems the simpler one. Does that mean it’s the right one? I’m not so sure, but there are some who tend to think the simpler explanation may be the right one and I do tend to lean in that direction. There are others like yourself that believe that a mind who knows everything about anything that exists at all is a simpler explanation. And to be honest I don’t believe the simplest explanation is always the best one anyways. But for me the “natural necessary” solution seems to fit with the fact that there really doesn’t seem to be gods around except through anecdotal stories of those that believe quite strongly. And many of my friends that believe in God have surprised me by admitting that they also don’t really get the feeling that He is anywhere to be detected, but they just have a hard time conceptualizing that stuff exists without God, so that’s what they believe.
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@Unklee: 😀 Forgot to respond to this in my last comment. No worries, because I can relate. While you have a couple of years on me ( 😉 ) I tend to do stuff like that quite a bit more than I used to. Especially forgetting stuff – that one seems to be a trait handed down from my dad.
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UnkleE,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to everyone. I have to give you credit for thinking through all these things that most Christians don’t want to think about. After reading your views about myths in Genesis and your stance on hell, I’m curious what “denomination” of Christianity you would call yourself?
I think science has repeatedly shown that it is the best method for discovering the ins and outs of reality.
No, but those are not really objective facts of reality that I would be attempting to discover. If the question was “Where do children come from?”, then science would be the best tool for answering that.
This seems like shaky evidence on par with UFO sightings. Just because lots of people attest to it does not mean much, but maybe I’m just more skeptical than you are. I’ve never witnessed a miracle, have you? If God did exist and did do some miracles we would have to wonder why he answers some and not others. Why do some parents lose their children despite their prayers while others don’t? It almost seems cruel this idea of someone pulling the strings behind the curtain and picking and choosing who gets healed and who suffers.
How do you know he was communicating something from God?
I appreciate this and wish you the best as well.
With regards to the philosophical arguments pointing towards God… Can you think of anything else besides God that people claim exists based on arguments like this?
It seems if we use this kind of reasoning to define something that exists we could end up with just about anything if we tried hard enough. I could find some facts about reality and then apply agenticity and employ some supernatural explanations for them. I’ll give one example and then I’m done. Observing the ways that animals have to devour one another to survive I could say that there were deities, say Zeus and Terra, who set this all up and enjoy watching these “cockfights” as lions hunt down impalas and so forth on a daily basis. I wonder what attributes you would derive for your God based on this same observation?
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Nate – I did not read through all the comments regarding your latest blog entry, so I hope I am not bringing up too many points already considered.
I believe that you raised the point about what are we being saved from. My understanding of the Gospel is that we are being saved from eternal death.
Concerning the hiddenness of God, I believe it is consistent with early Christian teaching that we remain alive in the spiritual realm upon the death of our bodies and everyone will have a first hand encounter with God there.
The outcome of our first hand encounter with God will be illumination, purification, and eternal life for most people. The few that refuse to be illuminated and purified experience eternal death, not eternal torment in the Lake of Fire.
As C.S Lewis noted, “In the end there are only two kinds of people, those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘thy will be done.'”
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It’s amazing how many people read the same book and come away with so many different conclusions. It’s too bad the Bible did not come with an FAQ at the end.
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I agree, Dave. I find it interesting to note that the early followers of Christ were known primarily for the care they took of the needy. And, not only the needy Christians, but the needy of any category. I’m not convinced the Great Commission meant so much to go out and bludgeon everyone you can with Jesus’ words as much as it was meant to go out and love others without reservation as Jesus did in his life.
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I realize I didn’t make much of a point on your comment I quoted, Dave. My point was that people would do better to look at what was done by the original followers of Jesus with the message and example they were given to get the best idea of what Jesus meant. The change he fostered in the lives of his disciples was mostly one of love and care toward others. Most people throughout history have preferred to rip a verse, bloody from being torn out of context, and fling it pointy end first at anyone they can see.
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Agreed. It’s a good idea to help each other out (whether there’s a “Someone” watching us or not).
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Josh and Dave – I find it interesting that in the first few decades after Pentecost AD. 33. the Christians were known as followers of the Way. They developed a reputation for following a way focused on charity and benevolence.
It is also interesting to note that none of the New Testament had been written, let alone canonized in these early years. It was the embrace of the Way by Constantine’s Mother Helena, that led to the many problems brought about by Church/State relations.
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I agree with you Josh. That’s why I had a recent post in my blog about the good we could do for mankind if people weren’t giving and tithing their money to their local churches. Best estimates indicate over 1 million churches worldwide with a conservative estimated wealth well over 1 trillion dollars and annual revenues of over $500 billion. As followers of Christ just think of the impact they could have on the world ! Instead they give their money to local churches (over 1 million of them) who duplicate salaries, building payments, utilities, misc overhead, when they could just pool the money and attack the world’s problems head on. Now that would be “spreading the good news” that would make the whole world take notice !
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That’s an excellent thought Ken, I must follow up on that a bit.
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Thanks unkleE. I also want to say that I gave statistics about christian churches because there are more sources for them. I would propose this for people who give to other religions. If you throw in Islam, Hindu, Jew and the others, no telling how much money could be spent to make the world a better place. I’m not saying money fixes everything but it gets people’s attention ! If you want to be Christlike, I think Jesus would rather we use the money to help our fellow man than to build another church.
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Hi Dave, thanks for your comments and your understanding. On a blog like this, we aren’t all going to agree, but hopefully we can all understand each other.
“I’m curious what “denomination” of Christianity you would call yourself?”
I have been part of several different denominations over a 50 year period as a christian, and I am part of one now, but I don’t really believe much in denominations – we just go where we believe God is calling us and where we can help people in some way. (We aren’t ‘gadflies’ about this – we have been in our current church 11 years, and 16 in the one before that.)
My greatest sympathies are with house churches and anabaptists (e.g. mennonites).
“No, but those are not really objective facts of reality that I would be attempting to discover. If the question was “Where do children come from?”, then science would be the best tool for answering that.”
So then it is worth thinking about what is the best method of knowing God. Is it purely science, no science, or a bit of science and a bit of something else?
“This seems like shaky evidence on par with UFO sightings. Just because lots of people attest to it does not mean much, but maybe I’m just more skeptical than you are. I’ve never witnessed a miracle, have you?”
Yes, 300 million may be on a par with UFO sightings, except for the ones that have been well documented medically. And many have been. Being a nerd, I once did a Bayesian probability calculation of how many documented apparent miracles we would need to conclude that God probably did exist (see Miracles and probability: the adventures of a maths nerd). Of course the result depends on one’s assumptions, but it certainly showed that it isn’t as many as people might think – certainly we have enough documented cases to satisfy.
“If God did exist and did do some miracles we would have to wonder why he answers some and not others. Why do some parents lose their children despite their prayers while others don’t?”
Yes, I do wonder that, and I don’t have an answer. But it is a different question from the one we are discussing. Not knowing why some people never win the lottery doesn’t change the fact that a certain percentage do.
“How do you know he was communicating something from God?”
I don’t know that, I believe it. I tried to be careful with my wording. I started with “good historical reasons” (i.e. evidence) and then concluded that “the best explanation of the historical “facts”” (i.e. belief) was that he was communicating something from God. My justification for that is in Jesus – son of God?.
“With regards to the philosophical arguments pointing towards God… Can you think of anything else besides God that people claim exists based on arguments like this?”
Interesting question, not sure if I’ve thought about it before. I think arguments about political or moral truths are in some ways analogous, perhaps also arguments about the multiverse. Secular discussion about the origin of the universe is probably not very different from christian discussion. But I think you are correct, these arguments are in some ways unique.
“It seems if we use this kind of reasoning to define something that exists we could end up with just about anything if we tried hard enough.”
I’m not sure if we could. The arguments may be unique, but so is the concept of God. You’re not going to get from the creation of the universe to the Flying Spaghetti Monster or R2D2! But we can see the philosophical arguments as not being the start, but the verification. People say they experience God. The NT writers say the saw God in human form. These are reports which may or may not be true. One way to verify the possibility they are true is the philosophical arguments. I think they work that way.
“I wonder what attributes you would derive for your God based on this same observation?”
The evil in the world, including the preying of animals on others, is a difficulty for christianity, no two ways about it. I think we can find ‘theodicies’ (ways of explaining what God is doing) that go some way, but I don’t think they remove the basic problem. I believe in God for all the reasons we have discussed, and despite the sorts of facts you raise.
It tells me that God is not some prissy grandfather in the sky, but a tough-minded dude who can cope with a lot of pain to achieve the good result he has in mind. If we didn’t have the life of Jesus,and the experience of answers to prayer, we might well conclude that God is a cosmic sadist or indifferent, as some people conclude. But I think the totality of evidence is well against those conclusions.
Thanks for all your questions. What about you? What’s your story and current belief (or not)?
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BTW Nate, you have Agnostic Pastor on your Blog Roll. He has deleted that site. No longer available.
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Nate, A State of Apostasy is deleted too.
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Thanks, chief! I updated my blogroll accordingly.
That’s a shame about those blogs. I really enjoyed them, especially “A State of Apostasy.” Hope Persto’s doing okay…
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UnkleE, I hope you’re enjoying the discussion as much as I am. Thanks for sharing some of your background, I’ll try and do the same at the end of my comment.
I think originally we were discussing the best method for discovering what caused the big bang or the start of our universe. In this statement you are assuming God exists and then trying to find a method to prove it.
You didn’t mention if you’ve ever witnessed one. I’ll take a look at the link you gave and come back to this one later.
Okay, I guess we should stick to trying and figure out if God actually exists or not – I have no problem with this.
I read the page you linked to and the arguments seem rather circular to me. Folks may have written that Jesus claimed to speak on God’s behalf, but people claim a lot of things. Should we believe similar claims from other people such as the prophet Muhammad? I guess we should probably try and establish if God exists first before we wonder if anyone is speaking on his behalf.
People say they experience a lot of things. I’m not sure if this is a good method for discovering the truth about reality. Taking what we know about human nature it’s easy to see that we tend to think there are “agents” behind the scenes of unknown phenomena. As Howie has pointed out there have been many instances in the past where these intuitions of humans have been proven false and the underlying mechanism has always had a natural explanation. Lightning, germs, earthquakes, etc.
Now we want to know what caused the big bang and theologians want to say that God did it. Other things go “bang” all the time and no one seems to explain them with a divine explanation. I’m thinking of lightning, volcanoes, atomic fusion and most specifically supernovae.
I get this feeling that people use the word God as just a quick way of not having to think about the problem anymore. “God did it, that settles it” comes to mind. I don’t think they actually take the time to try and comprehend what this “God” thing actually is. They say it is outside of time, but if that’s true then it would not be able to actually perform an action / event! If it did have a thought or an action then it would be subject to the before and after of time. They say it is immaterial, but if that’s true then it’s not made of anything! So now we’re left with a “mind” made of nothing that is without time and therefore cannot think or take actions. Honestly, I think theologians have pushed the definition of God right to the point of non-existence.
I used to believe in God very much. In fact I’m still sad today when I think of the lost relationship with what was basically an imaginary friend. My deconversion process (similar to Nate’s and others) was by no means easy and to some degree I still hold out hope that there is a higher being out there. But I can’t wish it into existence. I’ve set certain standards for myself and I won’t believe things just because it would make me feel better. I’ve looked at the cosmological and ontological argument, but they have some issues. The argument from design always seemed the most promising, but the problem of suffering and the randomness of everything really levels the field on this issue for me. I consider myself agnostic just because it seems like the most honest position right now. Thanks for asking.
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I’ve missed some really great comments. Instead of jumping back in at this point, I think I’ll just watch from the sidelines for a bit. I’ll chime in if I feel the need. Carry on! 🙂
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The way you speak, Nate, anyone would think it was YOUR blog! 🙂
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Hi Dave, yes I am enjoying it and appreciating it.
I don’t see how I’m assuming that. I’m asking how we might best try to detect, observe or know God exists. I think you may have assumed that science is the only way.
Nothing incontrovertible, but a few things that were unusual and I believe were acts of God.
Again, I can’t see any circularity. I start with what the best scholars (of all beliefs and none) say is probably historical fact, then ask how that information should be interpreted? What is circular about that? And since I believe this is part of the evidence for God, we are trying to establish if God exists.
I wonder what claims made by Mohammed are you referring to? And shouldn’t they be assessed in exactly the same way, by the evidence and the best explanation of it?
If it is documented that a person was seriously ill, and then documented that they recovered in an exceptionally unusual way, surely that is good evidence of something – whether spontaneous remission or something else? And if these unusual recoveries often happen after prayer, isn’t that significant?
We could approach every one of these the same way. Develop a list of possible explanations, and then see which is most and least probable. In all the other cases you mention, the natural explanation is overwhelmingly probable. In the case of the big bang, there isn’t really any natural explanation.
No doubt that is true for some people. “The Government” or “they” or “science” could all be used in the same way. But what would that signify? I am using the term based on quite extensive evidence and rigorous arguments.
I have a lot of sympathy with this view!! I actually have a theological degree, but I think much of theology is a waste of time because it tries to systematise matters about which we don’t have enough information to do that.
Did you just decide the evidence wasn’t enough to believe, or were you part of a church that you didn’t respect, or what? What catalysed your choice?
I think that’s a pretty fair way of looking at things. But for me, the number of good arguments for God are more than the number of good arguments against, and they are more fundamental. e.g. you can’t have a problem of evil unless you have true evil, but an objective, true, sense of good and evil is the basis of the moral argument for God. So before the argument from evil can have real force, you need to assume God and ethics (IMO).
Thanks again, I appreciate the opportunity.
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Hi Unkle,
That’s fine, but the original discussion (many comments ago), was concerning the issues you raised to Nate concerning the start of the universe and the basis for consciousness and some other things and my point had been that the best way to unravel these mysteries is with science. No worries, it’s hard to keep track of everything on this thread.
I think you may have established that Jesus existing and saying certain things is probable from a historical point of view (maybe), but that doesn’t really apply to my question – which is: How do we know that Jesus was speaking on God’s behalf? In other words, If there was a God how would we know what his views are? How can we verify that someone is speaking for God? What’s the standard?
I am referring to Muhammad claiming to have a message from God. What if the actual creator God was upset with the trinity concept and sent a message through Muhammad that he was not a 3-in-1 god? How can we tell if a message is from God or not?
I haven’t read through all the material you linked to yet, sorry, I have to find some time to do that.
Well I think it’s safe to say that in the other cases no intelligence is necessary to make a really big explosion so the same could be true for the “big bang”. I think there are some natural explanations out there for the big bang like an oscillating universe or quantum fluctuations and I think there are others too. If we could fast forward 100 years the discussion might be very different. Still, we don’t gain any insights by saying an invisible mind went “poof” to start our universe.
Actually I had a very nice church. The catalyst for me was simply realizing that I had no good reason to think the bible was from God. I also realized that I had never examined Christianity from an outsiders perspective, so that basically kick-started things for me.
I disagree. I didn’t use the word evil, I used suffering – which does exist. We have to ask ourselves if things looked like they were planned out with a purpose in mind.
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Hi Unklee:
The problem of evil is a serious problem for the Christian viewpoint because it is internally inconsistent. So even if someone doesn’t believe in objective good/evil, if they were to examine the Christian worldview they would be caught with a very difficult problem to solve. So the force of this issue is not diminished at all by what the person examining the viewpoint believes about good and evil.
Dave has brought up several other problems here with the theistic solution, so a case of “4-1” in your original objection is continuing to be shown incorrect. You seem to want to hold on to this inconsistency issue when unfortunately it could be turned back on you by others if they wanted to (I don’t want to do that). Again, we all try our best to weigh each issue for the impact we believe it has on the worldviews and put them all on the scales. Some issues weigh more in our minds than others as you have described for your own viewpoints, and this is a very subjective and difficult process for all of us, so simply claiming the other side is being inconsistent doesn’t really help me get closer to truth. I learn more when you write facts and arguments (which you do well) rather than judge others for being inconsistent when it’s way too subjective of a topic to make a call like that.
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@unkleE, “you can’t have a problem of evil unless you have true evil, but an objective, true, sense of good and evil is the basis of the moral argument for God. So before the argument from evil can have real force, you need to assume God and ethics ”
Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (KJV)
So unkleE, we need to assume your God is responsible for both good and evil and this is why we need to assume he is real ?
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Hey Howie. I may be off base, but I’m gonna take a crack at this. In order to claim that the problem of evil is “internally inconsistent” within the Christian framework, you have to be examining it from within the Christian framework, not from outside of it. The problem of evil largely depends on the assumption that God has not, is not, and will never do something about the evil in the world. However, one that examining this problem who is truly within the Christian framework would not come to these conclusions. In Jesus he came to earth himself and suffered the infection of evil for us in order to work the cleansing of evil for all people and all the earth. Looking at Christian scripture, particularly the NT, it becomes evident that God is at work bringing to fruition his promise that he would re-unite all things in harmony and peace. So, the problem is inconsistent for people who are on the outside looking in at Christianity. However, for Christians who have thought through the implications of what the NT teaches, there is promise of reconciliation, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are down-payments on that promise. So, while it does not solve the problem for the right here and right now, there is INTERNAL consistency with what Christianity teaches and the way the world appears. If Christianity made rosier claims about how the world appears or our ability to make ourselves and the world better without God’s intervention, then there would be the inconsistency you’re talking about. Christianity’s honest picture of the world is actually one of the reasons I find it more compelling than other teachings. Anyway, just something to think about.
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Hi Josh – there may be 2 things going on here. I was responding to Unklee’s statement here:
My point was just that someone who doesn’t believe in God can still see the argument from evil and suffering as having real force. Unklee has admitted elsewhere that the problem from evil is a difficult one for him (although he resolves it probably in similar ways as you do). What he is trying to say above is that if you don’t believe in God then you can’t see that the problem is a difficult one. But that is not true because someone that doesn’t believe can still go through the thought process of imagining it to be true and go from there.
If you’d like we can segway to talk about whether or not the argument from evil is a difficult one to solve or not. I believe the evidential argument is a difficult one, but I don’t see the logical argument as fully sound because we could always reason that we just don’t understand things properly. But resolving how there can be an all powerful all knowing and all good God with the fact that there is so much tremendous pain in the world is an issue that many have fought with. And some of these are simply natural disasters or things like terribly painful diseases that young children have to live with for however long their lives may be. Those have nothing to do with bad things that people do, that has to do with the way that the world simply is. A naturalistic point of view comes off looking like a better solution to this issue than the personal omni-God that I described. The solutions I see either re-define words in the argument or redefine God in some way that removes one of His “omni” traits. Your solution above leaves the question why if He is “bringing to fruition His promise” that the world is still filled with some horrific things (even natural things). You have even indicated what the issue is – the problem is still here right now. Pointing to what the future might be doesn’t solve the issue that exists in the now.
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